I recently made the haul down to SXSW. I’m back in The Heartland and excited to be posting for Donewaiting once more. Below is a WGRD (Grand Rapids, MI) interview with Black Keys’ drummer Patrick Carney on the current state of Spotify. More soon.

Dave Kim (WGRD): “You and [guitarist/vocalist] Dan [Auerbach] have said before that it’s not monetarily beneficial to stream your whole album on things like Spotify. Sean Parker, who started Napster and he’s a board member for Spotify, said last week at SXSW that Spotify will generate more revenue for the music industry in two years than iTunes. Do you believe him?”

Carney: “No.”

Kim: “How come?”

Carney: “Because he’s an a–hole. The guy has $2.5 billion he made from figuring out ways to steal royalties from artists, and that’s the bottom line. You can’t really trust anybody like that.”

“The idea of the streaming service – like Netflix for music – I’m totally not against that, it’s just that we won’t put all of our music on it until there are enough subscribers for it to make sense. There are only about a million-and-a-half Spotify subscribers, I think, but if there were like, 200 million -”

Kim: “I think what I read is that one song has to be streamed about 66 times to equal one 99-cent download royalty-wise.”

Carney: “Yeah, the way they do those – it’s all kind of confusing – on a 99-cent download, the royalty that goes to the band is about 12 cents.”

Kim: “Wow.”

Carney: “So that’s what they’re doing. 66 plays will get a 12-cent royalty. But then that goes to the label, and part of that is paid out to the artist from that. You can’t make money on that – trust me – Dan and I like to make money. If it was fair to the artist we would be involved in it, but it’s not.”

“I honestly don’t want to see Sean Parker succeed in anything, really. I imagine that if Spotify does become something that people are willing to pay for, then I’m sure iTunes will just create their own service, and do it themselves. And they’re actually more fair to artists.”

Many Ohio bands are headed down to SXSW 2012. They will represent The Buckeye State in a whole slew of musical genres. If you’re in Austin this year, make sure to give our Ohioans some love.

Here are the Ohio bands playing official showcases only, loving culled from the SXSW site. Feel free to post anything we’ve missed in the comments. There are, of course, quite a few unofficial showcases with Ohio bands, so post those, too. (There’s also quite a discussion raging in the message board about the 2012 “We Are Columbus” showcase.)

A reminder that National Record Store Day is April 21, 2012 this year. Per usual, many artists and labels will have limited-edition, RSD-only releases available. Nothing beats the aural, visual, tactile, and olfactory (smell those liner notes) of physical media. Support your local record store.

Maggie Vail, a seventeen-year veteran of the off-kilt Kill Rock Stars imprint, has started CASH Music – a nonprofit organization that builds open source digital tools for musicians and labels (read Vail’s KRS departure press release here). Along with Co-Executive Director Jesse von Doom, the pair are “building a free and open platform that’s available to all artists, designed in partnership with the artists and labels who are members of our organization. What WordPress did for bloggers, we’re doing for musicians.”

CASH membership already includes Throwing Muses, Ted Leo, Xiu Xiu, Domino Recording Co, Frenchkiss Records, and more, so it looks like they’re off to a good start. The organization is raising funds via a Kickstarter campaign. Those who donate $10 or more before March 9 receive a digital compilation with exclusive tracks from Elliott Smith, Throwing Muses, Deerhunter, and more.

GDG! was founded by former Guided By Voices/Swearing at Motorists drummer Don Thrasher and recently revived with now-bandmate Kyle Melton of Smug Brothers. Stay tuned for a more in-depth piece on Don Thrasher and his involvement with GBV, S@M, GDG! and more – coming very soon. For now: